mpicpp writes: A local New Hampshire police department agreed Thursday to pay a woman who was arrested and charged with wiretapping $57,000 to settle her civil rights lawsuit. The deal comes a week after a federal appeals court ruled that the public has a "First Amendment" right to film cops.

The plaintiff in the case, Carla Gericke, was arrested on wiretapping allegations in 2010 for filming her friend being pulled over by the Weare Police Department during a late-night traffic stop. Although Gericke was never brought to trial, she sued, alleging that her arrest constituted retaliatory prosecution in breach of her constitutional rights. The department, without admitting wrongdoing, settled Thursday in a move that the woman's attorney speculated would deter future police "retaliation."

The First US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) in Gericke's case last week that she was "exercising a clearly established First Amendment right when she attempted to film the traffic stop in the absence of a police order to stop filming or leave the area."

An anonymous reader writes: There are conflicting reports whether an arrest was made today regarding the Boston Marathon bombings.

Earlier today, CNN's John King reported that authorities had identified a suspect based on an analysis of video from a Lord & Taylor department store near the site of the second blast, and that video from a Boston TV station also helped. King cited a source who was briefed on the investigation.

A federal law enforcement source told CNN's Fran Townsend that someone was arrested. But two senior administration officials and another federal official then told Townsend that there had been a misunderstanding among officials and that no one has been arrested.

Scores of victims of the Boston bombing remained in hospitals, many with grievous injuries. Doctors who treated the wounded corroborated reports that the bombs were packed with shrapnel intended to cause mayhem. In addition to the 5-year-old child, a 9-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy were among 17 victims listed in critical condition. (ESPN Boston)

jywarren writes: Open source community Public Lab http://publiclab.org/ is a mentoring org this year for Google Summer of Code, meaning that you can now apply for funding to work on CERN OHL licensed projects from spectrometric matching to kite-photography georectifying. Does this indicate support by Google for the open hardware movement? Or the DIY environmental movement?

An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers at Independent Security Evaluators have published a report demonstrating that a slew of home and small office (SOHO) routers are vulnerable to previously undisclosed vulnerabilities. The report asserts that at least thirteen popular routers can be compromised by a remote attacker, and a number of them do not require knowledge of credentials or active management sessions. Some of the routers are not listed as they work with vendors to fix them, but there are 17 vulnerabilities disclosed, with another 21 pending release. An article on CNET includes an interview with some of the researchers.

Thousands of unnamed “John Does” in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en mass.

Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @02:46AM
from the franchise-strikes-back dept.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed debuted in 2008 to less than stellar reviews, but sales of the game were strong. A sequel for the game is due out in October, and the developers spoke at length with the Guardian's Games blog about the improvements they've been working on. One of their priorities was adding depth to the combat system to make it less of a button-mash. "The team has completely redesigned all the familiar Force powers from the first title including Force Push and Force Grip, and has added a few newcomers including the potentially amusing Force Mind Trick that'll allow you to trick Storm Troopers into leaping from high ledges." Enemy AI is another area that's getting some love, and they're trying to make level design more open and less linear. The team's confidence in the changes they're making stems in part from much greater familiarity with their game-building tools. "Like its predecessor, Force Unleashed 2 will combine three third-party physics engines, Havok, Euphoria and Digital Molecular Matter, to provide cutting edge human animation, materials effects and authentic physical forces. ... 'Whenever you're building the first iteration [of a game series] and a brand new game engine at the same time, everything comes in hot and fast – we were literally figuring out how to get the most out of those three technologies all the way up to shipping. The DLC then helped us to learn more, and that knowledge has given us the biggest leap forward.'" A trailer for the game was released at E3.

mat72 writes: Right now our government is attempting to reform our Copyright Laws under pressure from American Entertainment Lobbyists. How does this help the average Canadian citizen? I dunno, but the law will undoubtedly hurt independent artists and other small content creators alike. Gone will be the days where you can freely send your digital creation (whether it be music, a video, or videogame) to the masses with ease.

It could be argued that we’d always have the choice of other more open products, but it just won’t be the same. The entrainment industry will distribute content exclusively on devices locked down tighter than a duck’s arse. As a result, very few will invest in open alternatives, thus driving up the costs of these other options. Indie artists and developers will be required to jump hoops, and pay various fees in order to have the “honor” of distributing their own creations.

Apple is the prime example. I recently developed a game for Apple’s iPhone, which was rejected, as they thought it was “objectionable.” The problem is they don’t have strict guidelines as to what is, and what is not appropriate. It seems to depend on personal opinions, or how much money I have (ie less then Rockstar Games). Without Apple’s approval, my creation is locked out from anyone ever getting a hold of it. Well unless I release it for jailbroken iPhones. Under these proposed copyright laws, it would become illegal for anyone to unlock full functionality of their digital device. Apple has been known to censor content from creators in the past, including Mark Fiore – a Pulitzer Prize winner. Personally, I don’t need any corporation trying to act like my mother and making ambiguous moral choices for me. Though, I’m glad to say my mother was never an unfair, pretentious, uptight bitch either.

These laws will only protect the pockets of corporations and people who make money off the backs of talented artists and content producers. It’ll mean that the individuals with the real talent will have to pay in one way or the other, to the agents, distributors, lawyers, fluffers, etc,.. How far will it go? Would a person playing at an open mike night have to pay royalties because his/her music has a sound similar to some big shot singer? Will musicians require constant consults with their lawyers for every little decision they make?

Entertainment is not a necessity of life, and it’s a gazillion dollar industry. They can take care of it themselves. We, the citizens of Canada, do not want you, our elected government, to waste our tax dollars on throwing kids (or juvenile adults) in jail for the “Entertainment” industry nor do we want you invading our online privacy for the “Entertainment” industry. Shit, we barely want our privacy invaded in the name of Terrorism. Go enact some laws to protect the ones who need it. Maybe something that punishes executives who receive bonus after destroying the lives of their employees whose pensions they squandered.

Check out Michael Geist’s blog at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ for more information including what you can do to help prevent this law from seeing the light of day.

Mr Pink Eyes writes: Could this be Barack Obama’s Harriet Miers moment? When President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court the backlash was immediate and swift. But the reaction came from the right, as conservatives warned that her conservative credentials were in question. There was no paper trail for Harriet Miers, and President Bush was accused of cronyism as he asked Americans to trust him on Miers’ conservative views. Eventually Harriet Miers was forced to decline the nomination and Samual Alito was soon confirmed as President Bush’s second Supreme Court appointee.

schliz writes: iPhone app developer Darren Winterford considers himself an admirer of Apple, but if they genuinely care about their brand, they may need to address a few concerns that have began to disillusion even some of their most faithful, he says. With a growing propensity for secrecy, paranoia, trademark battles and regulatory exemptions, is Apple beginning to act like the very brand it set out to crush?

cremeglace writes: X-ray-like imaging without the harmful radiation and cell phones with more bandwidth are closer to reality now that researchers have developed a novel type of lens that works with terahertz frequencies. The new lens is a metamaterial, an artificial material with a structure made from many tiny parts, and it could drastically expand what lenses can do. ScienceNOW has the full article.

GMGruman writes: As of July 13, Microsoft will end its "extended" support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2, meaning no more security updates or other direct support beyond keeping it knowledge base available. However, as J. Peter Bruzzese reports, there is a way to extend the support period for XP: upgrade (for free) to the SP3 version, whose "extended support" (security updates but no "regular" fixes) period runs through April 2014.